“I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition,” Bill Gates wrote. “You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal. … (Location 252)
But spectacular advances in information technology suggest we are approaching a historical discontinuity in humanity’s relationship with machines. (Location 352)
Machines may get better at “mimicking human meaning,” and thereby better at predicting human behavior, but “there’s a difference between mimicking and reflecting meaning and originating meaning,” Ferrucci said. That’s a space human judgment will always occupy. (Location 372)
but we will also see more and more syntheses, like “freestyle chess,” in which humans with computers compete as teams, the human drawing on the computer’s indisputable strengths but also occasionally overriding the computer. (Location 376)
Note: Untrue?
Aggregations of aggregations can also yield impressive results. A well-conducted opinion survey aggregates a lot of information about voter intentions, but combining surveys—a “poll of polls”—turns many information pools into one big pool. That’s the core of what Nate Silver, Sam Wang, and other statisticians did in the presidential election of 2012. (Location 1125)
Note: Not GE19 bcos wide variance
A variant of this fallacy is to single out an extraordinarily successful person, show that it was extremely unlikely that the person could do what he or she did, and conclude that luck could not be the explanation. This often happens in news coverage of Wall Street. (Location 1479)
What the tip-of-your-nose perspective will not deliver is a judgment so fine grained that it can distinguish between, say, a 60% chance that it is a lion and an 80% chance. That takes slow, conscious, careful thought. (Location 2046)
Note: Disagree - its this time of day prob not a lion is a judgment we make all the time - cycling for instance
And that’s invaluable in the ass-kicking contest of life. (Location 2197)
